Dr Susan Deacy

 

Job Title: Senior Lecturer Qualifications: BA, PhD Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3823 Email Address: S.Deacy@roehampton.ac.uk

Academic Interests

• Greek religion (including polytheism and anthropomorphism; panhellenic v local 'systems'; gendered dimensions; classical mythology)
• Greek gender and sexuality (including sexual violence; male and female experiences of sex)

Current Research

• Latest news (May '09): I have accepted an invitation to contribute a chapter to a book of essays to be presented to a distinguised classicist on a significant birthday.

• Latest news (Nov '08): I have been invited to contribute an article 'Sex, sexuality, Greece' to Wiley-Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Ancient History.

• I am currently approaching the final stages of A Traitor to her Sex? Athena the Trickster – a monograph under contract to Oxford University Press (delivery date: Sept. ’09). This book is about Athena as she was constructed by the Greeks. But it is more than this. I am using the ‘vehicle’ of Athena to appraise scholarship on Greek religion and mythology from the emergence of ancient religion as a subject for academic research through the –isms that constitute a trend in the history of scholarship e.g. historicism, functionalism, structuralism, feminism, comparatism. This broad focus makes it effectively a book about numerous of the ‘greats’ of scholarship some of whom have given Athena a significance approaching the paradigmatic: e.g. Bachofen, Harrison, Freud, Kerényi, Burkert, Vernant, Detienne, Irigaray, Loraux.

The table of contents is included here to give a flavour of my approach:
• Chapter 1 Introduction
SOMETHING ELSE
• Chapter 2 The turning point: Athena and the functionalist paradigm
• Chapter 3 Challenging the tyranny
Chapter 4 Something else
THE AGE OF ATHENA
• Chapter 5 The trickster
• Chapter 6 Was Athena black?
BODY LANGUAGE
• Chapter 7 Performing gender
• Chapter 8 ‘Everything is changed and yet the same’: Athena’s eyes
KILLING PALLAS
• Chapter 9 Childhood
• Chapter 10 Athena’s other name
• Chapter 11 Parricidal Athena
DEAR MEN
• Chapter 12 The donor
• Chapter 13 The helper maid
• Chapter 14 Odysseus and his devotees
GOOD MYTHS
• Chapter 15 Herakles
• Chapter 16 Erichthonios

• My other current project is The Impenetrability of Desire: Women's Experience of Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece, which I am editing with M. Bachvarova for Cambridge University Press. This book re-evaluates interpretative models for interpreting ancient sexuality and gender though two interlinked ‘pathways’ of rape and desire. The team of contributors (7 US-based; 5 UK-based) is: M. Bachvarova, N. Rabinowitz, M. Cyrino, K. Ormand, J. Redfield, M. Toscano, R. Kennedy, S. Deacy, E. Harris, R. Omitowoju, K. Pierce, J. Robson.

• I am the series editor of Routledge's Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World, which was descried in May 2008 as ‘uniformly excellent’ by Robert Segal in Times Highter Education. My own book (Athena) was published in 2008 as was Perseus by D. Ogden. Forthcoming publications include Apollo (F. Graf) and Herakles (E. Stafford).

Research: 2009-13

• Mythology and autism. This ‘blue-skies’ research is at the initial planning stage. It is envisaged as a collaborative project to research the educational benefits of teaching mythology to children with ASDs.

• Co-authored research with F. McHardy (Roehampton) that will extend previous work by both of us on crime, rape and violence via an evolutionary biological approach to sexual violence. It will contribute to current debates in historical studies on violence as culturally conditioned vs biologically determined. Amongst the innovative aspects would be the examination of the applicability to classical scholarship of the work of Daly and Wilson.

Promoting Classical Civilisation

• I take an active role in the promotion of the subject nationally. I served on the council of Hellenic Society from 2000-3 and was re-elected for 2006-9. I am currently on the council of the Classical Association. I have been involved with local organisations, including the North Staffs Classical Association, for whom I served as Secretary 2000-3.

• I have taken part in TV documentaries, including 'The Hidden History of Sex and Love' which won the Royal Television Society [Southern Region] award for best independent production of 2002.

• I have played an active part in conference organisation including ‘Violence and Power: An International Symposium on Rape in Antiquity (with K. Pierce, Cardiff 1994) and ‘Athena in the Classical World (with A. Villing, Oxford 1998) (both resulting in edited volumes). The most recent event I organised was ‘Gender and the Sacred in Cross-Cultural Perspective’, held at Roehampton in March 2008 which drew together scholars working in classics as well as other disciplines including religious studies, history of sexuality, anthropology.

Publications

Single-Authored Books

• Athena (Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World series), Routledge 2008.
• A Traitor to her Sex? Athena the Trickster, Oxford University Press forthcoming.

Edited Books

• Rape in Antiquity, with K. Pierce, Duckworth/Classical Press of Wales 1997.
• Athena in the Classical World, edited by S. Deacy and A. Villing, Brill 2001.
• Rape in Antiquity, edited by S. Deacy and K. Pierce, Duckworth 2002 [paperback edition with new preface].
• The Impenetrability of Desire: Women's experience of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece, with M. Bachvarova, Cambridge University Press forthcoming.

Contributions to Books/Articles

• 'Athena in Boiotia: Local tradition and cultural identity', in J. Fossey ed., Boiotia Antiqua V. Studies on Boiotian Topography, Cults and Terracottas, Gieben 1995, 91-103.
• 'The Vulnerability of Athena: Parthenoi and rape in Greek myth', in S. Deacy and K. Pierce ed., Rape in Antiquity, Duckworth/Classical Press of Wales 1997, 43-63.
• 'Athena and the Amazons: Mortal and immortal femininity in Greek myth', in A. Lloyd ed., What is a God? Studies in the Nature of Greek Divinity, Duckworth/Classical Press of Wales 1997, 153-68.
• 'Athena and Ares: War, violence, and warlike deities', in H. van Wees ed., War and Violence in Ancient Greece, Duckworth/Classical Press of Wales 2000, 285-98.
• 'Athena Past and Present: An introduction', with A. Villing, in S. Deacy and A. Villing, ed., Athena in the Classical World, Brill 2001, 1-25.
• 'Preface to the paperback edition', with K. Pierce, in Rape in Antiquity, Duckworth 2002, vii-xiv.
• 'Athena Blues: Athena and colour in Ancient Greek myth and art', with A. Villing, in L. Cleland and K. Stears ed., Colour in the Ancient Mediterranean World, BAR International Series 1267 (2004), 85-90.
• 'Herakles and his "girl": Heroism, Athena and beyond', in L. Rawlings, ed. Herakles and Hercules: Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity, Classical Press of Wales 2005, 37-50.
‘Series Editor's Foreword’, to appear in each volume of the Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World series, 2005- (Volumes already published: Zeus, Medea, Prometheus, Dionysos, Oedipus; Athena, Perseus).
• ‘Introduction: desire or rape?’, in The Impenetrability of Desire: Women's experience of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press forthcoming.
• ‘‘A flowery tale’: Young women and heroic rape’, in S. Deacy and M. Bachvarova, ed., The Impenetrability of Desire: Women's experience of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press forthcoming.
• ‘Famous Athens, Divine Polis: The religious system in Athens', in D. Ogden ed., Companion to Greek Religion, Blackwell 2007, 221-35.
• ‘What was the colour of Athena’s aegis?’ with A. Villing, Journal of Hellenic Studies forthcoming 2009

Book Reviews

• D. Gera, Warrior Women. The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus, Classical Review 50.1 (2000), 352-3
• M. Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, Classical Review 50.2 (2000), 617-8
• E. Stafford, Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece, JACT Review 33 (Summer 2003), 28
• L. Doherty, Gender and the Interpretation of Classical Myth, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003.08.02
• N. Loraux, Born of Earth: Myth and Politics in Athens, Classical Bulletin forthcoming
• L. Llewellyn-Jones (ed.), Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World, JACT Review, 2004
• R. Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite, JACT Review 2005
• R. Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens, Classical Rewiew 57.1 (2007), 214-5
•S. Price and E. Kearns (ed), The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, Bryn Mawr Review forthcoming
• J.B. Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, Journal of Hellenic Studies forthcoming 2008
• M. Munn. The Mother of the Gods, Athens and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion, Hermathena forthcoming
• H. Morales, Classical Mythology: A very short introduction, Classical Review forthcoming.
• R.D. Woodford (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, Classical Review forthcoming.

Encyclopaedia Entries

• ‘Anthropomorphism . IV. Greco-Roman Antiquity’ (470 words) in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), Walter de Gruyter (2008–2017)
• ‘Athena’ (2380 words) in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), Walter de Gruyter (2008–2017)

Undergraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

Classical Civilisation